The Wire

Australia has anounced it will accept 50 Uzbekistan refugees, following violence in Eastern Uzbekistan last May. Roughly five hundred people were killed, in the city of Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan, when security forces opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators. The Andijan incident has been dubbed the bloodiest in Central Asia since the end of the Cold War. A number of NGO’s claim that after the event, up to four thousand refugees fled across the border from Uzbekistan into Kyrgyzstan. Since then, the Uzbek government has been applying pressure to Kygyz authorities to send the remaining refugees back to Uzbekistan. This pressure has prompted the United Nations High Comissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, to find places for 450 of the refugees. Australia, as one of roughly twenty nations which provides emergency settlement places , has been approached by the UNHCR to accept a number of the refugees. The Wire’s Ed Giles spoke to Margaret Piper, executive director of the Refugee Council of Australia, about Australia’s role in accepting emergency refugees.